My wife purchased a Stanley cup through Amazon and 5 months later its thermal regulation stopped working. She contacted Stanley about their lifetime warranty and after some back and forth with Stanley's rep, they determined that the item was counterfeit and because Amazon is not one of their authorized resellers there wasn't anything they would do. This was purchased through the "Stanley" store but was fulfilled by a third party and not Amazon directly, something my wife wasn't even aware Amazon did. The seller never responded to contact and Amazon refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit.
The hypocrisy is apparent when you notice that the pretty much the only brand of products that miraculously does not have third party resellers listed (and hence escapes third party inventory commingling contamination issues) is Amazon Basics. [1]
Nah, let’s not go this far. Might be true for some AmazonBasics product categories, but I have a specific example where this is just not true.
Their AmazonBasics monitor arms are manufactured by Ergotron (aka one of the most reputable and best monitor arm brands out there). I have both AmazonBasics and Ergotron arms (purchased from their official website), and it is clear as day that they are nearly the exact same product.
I purchased the AmazonBasics arms back in 2016, and they still serve me great to this day, surviving 2 moves between west-east coast and many more local moves.
You can call this anecdata, but both AmazonBasics monitor arms and Ergotron ones have excellent reputation.
Mind you I buy a lot of both Amazon Basics as well as Aliexpress generic products. I'm not saying something is garbage for being in this category, sometimes there are quality products, as you note.
In other words being generic and being garbage aren't a perfect circle in a Venn diagram.
> refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit
That sounds like a legal liability for them, as in "exhibit D demonstrates the defendant knowingly kept a fraudulent listing available for purchase" /ianal
>they determined that the item was counterfeit and because Amazon is not one of their authorized resellers
Amazon is an authorized retailer of Stanley 1913 products.
They determined that the item was counterfeit because you did not purchase it from Amazon.com you purchased it via Amazon.com from a third-party.
My Amazon account was created in 1998 and since 2008-ish I have barely entered any physical stores due to me being in an extremely rapid delivery area where I once got a microwave delivered three hours after ordering it.
Since then, the number of times I have purchased something on Amazon that has been fulfilled by a third party without my knowledge can be counted on zero fingers. The seller is prominently displayed directly below the "Add to cart/Buy now" buttons on both the website and mobile app and is listed again during the checkout process.
Please help me understand because I hear about this happening often and have a genuine, non-snarky belief that Amazon might be showing me a different version of their storefront because I also hardly ever see any of the cheap Chinese trash everyone complains about.
Obviously, if I search for "novelty rainbow colored wig" I'll get all of the hootoovooodoo brands but for normal things? Nope.
And I have never been curved to a third-party unless I specifically hit "compare all options" and scroll through the list down past all of the other amazon (returns/refurbs/scratch-and-dent) listings and EXPLICITLY choose a reseller.
To be clear, this wasn't an example of Amazon explicitly not having it in stock and she went to third parties looking for it or her shopping for better prices. In both of those workflows it is very obvious you are buying from a third party. Instead, she went to the product page, went to the color she was looking for and just hit add to cart. I will note that it does show a different seller, but you can't argue it is prominent; it's the smallest font on the entire page. Here is a link to an Amazon page with the product[1]. If you click on the different colors on that page, you'll see that most of them are shipped and sold by Amazon; this product was shipped by Amazon, but not sold by them. Here is a screenshot of the product page[2]. You'll see that "Pure luxury" is the actual seller, even though it is shipped by Amazon. As mentioned before, while it is directly below the Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons, it is the smallest font. I hope this explains how even though you are on the official store page, you can purchase from a third-party without realizing it. Amazon has been doing this more and more recently, but this was the first time it ever bit us.
> that has been fulfilled by a third party without my knowledge can be counted on zero fingers.
Since they commingle products at the warehouse level and handle *actual* fulfillment at the SKU level and not the vendor level - how do you know this?
At the warehouse there's a bin of widgets that are all supposedly the same. Regardless of who the vendor is purported to be when you buy it, if it's coming from that warehouse it's coming from that bin of widgets.
>Since they commingle products at the warehouse level and handle actual fulfillment at the SKU level and not the vendor level - how do you know this?
Because Amazon does not commingle first and third-party inventory and I do not buy, since it is so easy to avoid, from third parties (or drop shippers) unless it is an extremely niche item like a 0.1" to 0.025" 10-pin header adapter.
Unless, of course, they are lying. Do you have evidence they are lying?
Do you have any proof they are not commingling? Have they outright said it at any point? Because there's more than enough anecdotes out there (and in previous threads about it on HN) that show that 1st party products are not treated any differently.
Amazon has to list the value of their inventory in financial reports.
If they were commingling every single report would be a lie.
Also, they explicitly state that:
>Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory as product sales and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by third-party sellers as service sales.
If they were commingling, those figures would be a lie.
The reason that would be lie is that Amazon has defended itself from product liability lawsuits for harms caused by defective products sold by third parties by repeatedly claiming in court that they do not take title to the goods in their possession that are supplied by third parties.
When you take title to something it is yours.
If it is yours, you need to include its value in an inventory valuation.
If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains in inventory, and what that is worth.
Their inventory valuation would be a lie, their product sales figures would be a lie, and their service sales figures would be a lie. The amount of insurance they carry would be wrong, and that would open them up to legal vulnerabilities if anyone can demonstrate that the toaster they bought from a third-party seller which exploded was actually a toaster Amazon had title to and was shipped to them due to being commingled.
The only thing an investor has to do to sue the shit out of amazon is establish that their numbers are wrong, and are wrong on purpose, and they have been harmed by their numbers being wrong.
They can commingle but simply keep track of how much of the inventory is theirs and how much is not. I think you have a limited understand of how their system works.
I got an Amazon product the other day, likely counterfeit, Amazon listed as seller and has 3rd party sticky barcodes on the packaging. How is that possible without commingling.
Ok cool, so they haven't actually said it anywhere. You're just assuming because of your interpretation of wording in their reports, and then taking it to the slippery slope extreme.
> If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains and inventory, and what that is worth.
How is this not a problem for the 3rd parties with commingled inventory? Amazon clearly has a way to know which of the many 3rd party sellers they commingled sold the product in order to pay them, and know how many products are in stock across their commingled inventory.
Considering the product is supposedly the same, the cost would be the same, and they would only need to do the exact same tracking they do with 3rd party sellers whenever they themselves sell an item from the commingled pile.
By design, it is assured that the number of products you put into the system are the number you will eventually sell, even if it's not the exact same physical product. And that is totally fine if the products are identical and cost the same. That is the whole point of the commingling system; that the products are meant to be completely interchangeable. There's no accounting magic to be done, you're just tracking the number you sold vs the number you put in.
